And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

I have my son’s dog tags which he wore for his deployment to Iraq. I treasure them and look at them often to contemplate the lessons I learned that year – an awareness of the real presence of God, gratefulness for every day of life, realization that imprinted in just four lines of metal is all the Army needs to know about a soldier. This is how my son’s dog tag reads:

There is no rank, no hometown, no race, no family – just a blood type which ties him to the physical world and a religious affiliation which ties him to the spiritual world. At the end of the day that is who we are – human beings with a blood type imprinted on our DNA and spiritual beings with a religious confession of faith in Christ imprinted on our souls.

Jesus Christ’s passion and death reaches us with lessons of grace, because he was both a human being and God, a human – divine miracle, and the source of grace we so desperately need.

The angel declared his name, “God with Us”

God With Us, in a feeding trough.

God With Us, touching lepers sores

God With Us, run out of his hometown.

God With Us, spit upon, slapped, scourged.

God With Us, crowned with thorns.

God With Us, hanging on a tree.

God With Us, dead in a tomb.

God With Us, walking out of a cemetery.

Over and over “God With Us” demonstrated how to give grace – underserved gifts of love and mercy to the unworthy, unloving, and ungrateful. The crucifixion of Christ provides for us an image of the essence of our existence – finite human beings and infinite souls that are united by the resurrection of God With Us, the divine and human in a portrait of grace.

PRAYER: Father, Thank you for grace shown to us in the death and resurrection of Christ.